Vojtěch Baštýř↓

About the work

Imaginary World

Vojtěch Baštýř in his work deals with the connection of the fictional and real worlds into narrative units that evoke the bizarre realities of prefabricated housing estates, graffiti pop culture, and Vietnamese kitsch. He seeks inspiration in classic subjects found in history, trying to transform them with regard to the changing perception of moral values of today. Baštýř’s paintings employ high luminosity and color contrast in order to evoke a positive mood linked with the color range of graffiti, the pastel tonality of the suburbs, and the striking contrast of kitsch.Figurative subjects thus appear in the plot interaction with fanciful monsters in the housing estates’ realities or in the environment of Vietnamese shops. The gray figures play the role of guides in his paintings and at the same time they are a kind of litmus paper of moral values related to the present. The materialized monsters help the guides fight the traps set all around, but at the same time they take on the forms taught by the guides. They are gradually adapting to our world and learning from it. Baštýř always tries to look at a painting as a story moment, which he had pulled out of a longer plot context. Therefore, he also deals with comics, which allows for a form of sequential narration.